This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
What indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?
Every unkindness to another is a little Death in the Divine Image; nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood.
Brotherhood | Death | Little | Man | Unkindness |
The first paradox of our lives is that nothing is fixed; and yet nothing is random or accidental, either. We co-create with our spiritual source. We have free will, and yet we are not in control. The second paradox is that when we set our intention for what we desire, we achieve it usually only after we have released our need to have it. This is the paradox of intention (personal desire and will) and surrender (letting God or the universe provide what is best for our highest good). You are both a finite earthly being, and an infinite soul of greater spiritual dimension. Your are both/and. You are the drop of water and the wave. You direct yourself, and you are directed.
Control | Desire | Free will | God | Good | Intention | Need | Nothing | Paradox | Soul | Surrender | Universe | Will | God |
If we see life’s purpose as the achievement of future goals, several problems arise. If we are mortal, the problem is simply that there will come a time when we have no future. Life would end with meaning unfulfilled, since death would eventually rob us of the future where the purposes for our actions lie.
Achievement | Death | Future | Goals | Life | Life | Meaning | Mortal | Problems | Purpose | Purpose | Time | Will |
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Just as life is defined as biological change and death as its lack, so meaning in life is characterized by the application of stable patterns to changing circumstances and the replacing of old patterns of understanding with new and exploratory ones. Meaning is found in the losing of it, the searching after it, and in the finding of it again. The meaning in your life is in flux and is to be found in the flux (the flow) of meaning, which is therefore itself a source of meaning in your life. All this does require, however, the developing of a tolerance for ambiguity, of a willingness to accept the inevitability of change and the precariousness of your present vision, and of an openness to the unending richness of your experience of the world in its manifold variety and diversity.
Ambiguity | Change | Circumstances | Death | Diversity | Experience | Life | Life | Meaning | Openness | Present | Understanding | Vision | World | Old |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
Any man who says he is not afraid of death is a liar.
Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.
Death | Imagination | Life | Life |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
Only faith in a life after death in a brighter world where dear ones will meet again - only that and the measured tramp of time can give consolation.
Consolation | Death | Faith | Life | Life | Time | Will | World |